Nanny Returns (16 page)

“Thank you, Mr.—”

“Calvin. History. My family, back to my great-grandfather, has a Jarndyce education and they didn’t need a helicopter pad to get it.”

“Mr. Calvin, I appreciate your candidness.”

He stares at me evenly, mincing his lips beneath his gray mustache, holding his colleagues’ attention, and I turn back to Ingrid. “So, what do you think?”

“I just can’t follow what you’re—This is
my
fault?” She stares at me from across the dim space. “I have to—”

“Stay employed.” My hands find my hips. “So you can live to teach another day at another school where you will go, when you’re ready, on your own terms.” I fight the urge to throw my coat around her and carry her to some progressive charter where the parents are humble and the ceilings unreflective.

Man Haircut slaps her palms on her knees. “You know they can choose not to renew
any
of our contracts and replace us with kids Ingrid’s age at a fraction of the cost.”

“Not without cause,” Ingrid corrects her. “They have to make a case.”

“And I don’t see that,” I say, although I’m starting to. “You
are
the history of this school.”

“They’re not interested in
history
,” Mr. Calvin retorts. “If they want Ingrid to apologize for this disgrace, well, then . . .” His voice quiets and he looks down at his faded loafers. “The lines are clear. That’s it. I’m taking a stand.” He crosses his arms and hope breaks on Ingrid’s face.

“Great!” I encourage him. “You have power in numbers. If you all band together, you have sway over this situation.”

“Precisely.” He reknots his tie and bends to swipe his coat from the floor. “As of tomorrow morning, I’m resigning from the Grievance Committee.”

Clamoring in agreement, the other teachers climb to their feet. Jeff is the last to join them, unable to meet Ingrid’s eyes as she seeks him out.

I spin to Mr. Calvin. “Disbanding the committee is only going to give them more power.”

“
More
power?” he asks sarcastically.

“Look, the sites are coming down.” Jeff shrugs sheepishly in Ingrid’s direction. Mr. Calvin waves his hand and the crowd passes through the library door.

Alone, Ingrid looks to me from her beanbag. “What are you thinking?” I ask.

She nods her head, her lips pressed flat. “I’m thinking that my fiancé lost his job and we just got a notice that as of June first our rent’s going up. So . . .” Her head sinks into her hands in a sign of capitulation. “Is Darwin writing a letter about his role in this?”

“Yes.”

“I know I could defuse this bullshit if I could
just
discuss it with him,” she says intently.

“I guess now you can, only …with the Manhattan private school community as an audience.”

“I don’t know if I feel comfortable publishing this, Mr. DeSanto.” Chloe, the seventeen-year-old editor in chief of
The Jarndyce Times
drops Ingrid’s letter on his desk and taps her Roger Vivier buckled flats as only someone who took an after-school nap, ate a warm chef-prepared dinner, and then got in a town car can.

Gene, Tim, Janelle, Ingrid, and I look in bleary-eyed misery at her and her trio of Scoop-clad, if scoopless, editors.

“Why, Chloe?” Gene asks, his stubbled chin resting on his fists, which are resting on his blotter.

“Because why does
she
get a voice? She has a voice! She gets to express herself all day long. All the teachers do! This is our paper. Plus.” She juts out one black-legginged hip. “I don’t think she’s really sorry.”

Ingrid lets out a stifled sigh that seems to satisfy Darwin, sprawled on the couch opposite, to no end.

“Look, Chloe,” Gene tries again. “It’s been a long night and this needs to be published first thing. I think Ms. Wells has done what we’ve asked her to do. She’s taken responsibility for setting a tone in her classroom that could have been misconstrued as inviting virtual free-form feedback. Perhaps if you and your editors read it again.”

Chloe weighs this option. Janelle’s eyes close, her head falling forward.

“Maybe if we heard it,” one of the editors suggests. “She should read it out loud to us.”

“I would consider that.” Chloe crosses her arms.

Ingrid shoots up, grabs the red pen from Chloe’s hand, swipes the letter from Gene’s desk, and crosses it with a huge
X
. She flips the piece of paper over and scrawls as she speaks: “Dear …students …I’m …sorry …It’s …all …my …fault.” She hands the paper to Chloe. “Okay?” She spins to Darwin. “Enough?”

He brightens into a grin. She stares down at him, her cried-out eyes pushing through his mask of smugness, which, to my surprise, fades, as does the grin. And suddenly he looks as miserable as she.

“Chloe,” Gene sighs.

“Okay, fine.” Chloe shrugs. “Whatever. I have an obligation to express my editorial opinion. Which I’ve done. We can go with the first version.”

“Hallelujah,” Janelle mutters.

13

“Nan-neh!” That Saturday evening Stilton opens his front door in a dark suit, his hair slicked back, coiffed like he’s about to carry wedding bands down an aisle. “Nan-neh!” His eyes widen. “What happened?!”

“My bedroom ceiling collapsed.” I look down at my cell. “But I’m not late. We’re not late. I have a plan.” I clap my hands, little powdery puffs of plaster dispersing into the air. “Are you ready?”

“But you look like a ghost.”

I turn to the vestibule mirror and see why my fellow straphangers were staring: I didn’t fully shake out all the dust from my hair and my face is still patched with chalk and my dress . . .

“Hop, hop!” I press for the elevator and Stilton gets in beside me.

“It starts in twenty minutes.” He bounces onto his toes. “My mom left hours ago to go to the hair place. Why are we going up?”

“Five minutes and I will be clean and changed.” We get out on eleven and, coming to my prebenefit rescue, Citrine opens her front door and I hesitate to step into her embrace. “Op, be careful, I’m
filthy
,” I say as she squeezes me.

“No, I’m filthy and you just try to get close to me over my boobs, just try it,” she says, stepping back into her drop-cloth-draped entrance hall. In the week since our last lunch date, she’s filled out beneath her husband’s trashed oxford and her cheeks look fuller. She cups her cleavage. “It’s like carrying around a bra full of produce in a camp dare. I keep wanting to put them down, only I’m stuck. Fuck breast-feeding, man! Fuck it. I just want my body back. Oops, sorry.” She notices Stilton. I try to focus on her words, but am distracted by men in matching white jumpsuits scurrying past in all directions, carrying equipment and materials like manic insects facing a frost. I want to reach out and throw myself around a passing ankle and beg one of them to come home with me.

Stilton steps around me and holds out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Citrine, this is Stilton, master poem reciter. He lives on nine.”

“We’re late,” he updates her.

“Come, let me show you the progress and then we’ll find you a dress.”

“We’re late,” he repeats.

“Five minutes!” she calls over her shoulder.

We follow her past the team with blowtorches blistering the pale yellow paint off the foyer walls, into the living room, where another pair of men are removing the sledgehammered remains of the dividing wall to the dining room. “We’re not supposed to have any workmen on Saturdays, but we’ve found as long as they stick to quiet pursuits we get away with it.” The French doors Ryan wants Steve to replicate lie on the floor, panes shattered.

“I wanted an open flow.” She swings her arms up and down like Martha Graham. “Less stuffy and farty.”

“Sure,” I say, standing in the now Versailles-sized space, open veins running through walls where every bit of wiring has been ripped out.

Stilton looks around, jaw dropped. “It’s our house, but like we all died and aliens came and made it different.”

“Yes.” I nod.

“Let me show you the kitchen.” She holds her left hand out and when she takes mine, something scrapes me and I pull back. She laughs, blushing as she looks at her fingers. “Oh gosh, sorry, I’m not used to this thing and it’s a weapon.” She is staring—we’re both staring—at an easily six-carat diamond ring with matching chunky eternity band. “I dug it out of my jewelry box—I just figured since I’m starting to show, I should try to look married. I was getting these horrible stares at the gym. Oh, guess who I’ve started taking prenatal yoga with?”

I shrug. “Hester Prynne?”

“Tatiana. She’s having her second. We’re going crib shopping together tomorrow. How crazy is that? I’ve been really surprised—I forgot how funny she is. She got all worked up about throwing me a shower.”

“Well, please tell her I’d love to help. I really took on baking in Sweden.”

“Oh. Cool.” She pushes through the swinging door from the dining room into what was once my favorite room here. I loved the old refectory table, the piles of newspapers, the dog beds. Now it’s just four raw walls with a few capped-off pipes protruding from them. And a red placemat-sized patch on one, as if the days-old space had a birthmark. “Puttanesca,” she says, acknowledging the stain. “I got so angry at Clark I threw a takeout container at him last week. The pasta missed, but I got him with the salad. He got balsamic in his eye.” She leans back on her hip with a half smile. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever thrown at Ryan?”

Sarcasm?

“I hit Clark in the head with a corkscrew last year.” She laughs. “That was bad. I thought he’d need stitches.”

“You’re kidding. What were you fighting over?”

“Oh, who can remember, right? You know when you just want to smash their face in?” Smiling fully, she pinches my waist as Stilton walks around, his head torquing left and right, a confused expression as he tries to reconcile the raw space with his kitchen. “Anyway, I’m turning the corner. Now that I got my bathtub I may give Clark his
Battlestar Galactica
design. I mean, it’s not like I cook. We’ll hire our chef now, and then he and Clark can finish it together. You need an outfit!” She abruptly changes course.

“Yes, she does,” Stilton agrees. “Because we’re late.”

“We are not. You’re so great to do this. If the electrician hadn’t been mucking about in the attic, the bedroom ceiling wouldn’t suddenly have rained plaster on me and my entire wardrobe.”

“Not at all. I’m so fat. I can’t get into anything I bought for this season and it’s all just sitting there with the tags on.” She leads us through three layers of meticulously taped plastic, carefully unsticking the blue strips from the wall. “I have them triple-tape this wing in every morning. So far, so good. I hate dust. We could just stay at a hotel, but I think contractors go faster if you’re on-site.” We duck under the flap opening into the once floral-covered walls of the Hutchinsons’ bedroom, with the beautiful view of the landscaped roofs of Park Avenue.

“Who would imagine this high up you see trees?” I sigh enviously.

“I know! We’ve left it for now, so I have a refuge. We just threw up a quick coat of paint and some curtains, but after they finish the public spaces this’ll be gutted.” The walls have been frescoed the palest lavender, with matching heavy silk drapes. These were not hastily grabbed at an Uppsala Christmas fair. “Okay, so let me pull some things.” She opens the door to the room that was Dorothy’s office, now filled with rolling garment racks, and wheels one in. There is indeed a white tag dangling from every sleeve.

“Okay, this shindig you’re going to is all of New York society under one roof, united by the prestige of private education. Elegant and intellectual.” She rifles the rack while I try to keep from slipping off her silvery bedspread in the once-black crepe shift I was going to wear. “I mean, it’s not like when you’re at a benefit for something frivolous, like the ballet or the Costume Institute, and you can wear some couture confection. Or something so god-awful, like Darfur or rape or AIDS and you need to distract with something really upbeat and bright—this is more like the New York Public Library, you know?” I don’t. “This is spring-weight cashmere. This is”—she whips a dress off the rack and toreadors it in front of her. “Carolina Herrera!”

“It’s great. Put it on,” Stilton instructs.

“Oh, Citrine, I can’t. It’s too beautiful,” I say of the chocolate knit and satin dress. “What if someone bumps into me with a drink?”

“Oh, who cares? My hips are going to move in the next few months.
Move
. My feet are going to go up a size. My pelvis is going to go out a size. Permanently. I will never be the same size or shape again.” She takes in a stilted breath and glances to the ceiling for a moment. “I will have to get rid of everything. So grab it while it’s still au courant.”

Leaving Stilton to bounce his butt anxiously on the bedspread, I duck into the bathroom. “Use any of the washcloths in the basket by the sink—they’re all clean,” she calls after me. I quickly wipe myself down, unpin and shake my hair out over the bathtub, and try the frock, spinning to admire it in the mirrored cabinet doors. It is the single most stunning thing I have ever put on, apologies to my wedding dress. The cap sleeves hit at the perfect spot, making me look as if my passing acquaintance with lifting heavy things is a lifelong gym habit. The drape of the skirt is feminine and sharp all at the same time. “Wow, Citrine, I love it.” I come out.

“It’s perfect—it’s yours!” She claps.

Stilton claps. “Let’s go.”

“Thank you so much. Can I just leave this here and grab it from you next week?” I hand off the trashed dress. “It’s embarrassing—I mean, I have clothes. Just nothing currently not Ghost of Christmas Past–ish.”

“Have you tried triple-taping where the work is done?” She places the dress on the floor.

“That would mean taping myself out of my only working toilet.”

“Nan-neh!”

“Yes! On it!” I step back into the bathroom and retwist my hair.

“How did you learn to do that?” she asks, leaning in the door-frame.

“My grandmother.”

“That’s nice. I never knew mine. One drank herself to death. The other had a stroke. Did I ever tell you my grandfather made my mom drop out of college to look after her? I mean, he could’ve hired someone. I think he never wanted my mom to go to school in the first place. He wasn’t a real women’s libber.”

“What happened?” I ask, weaving the last pin against my scalp.

“Oh, well, thank God she died, as my mother puts it.” She sticks the corner of a finger in her mouth and bites off a jagged paint-stained cuticle as I reach into my bag for my mini Trish McEvoy makeup palette to repair the damage. “She finally got to move down to the city and meet my dad. But by this point, she was already in her late thirties. I think when I came along she was a little burnt out on caregiving, you know? And when I was only ten Dad was already seventy and she was doing it all over again.”

“You have an older sister.” I suddenly remember a girl with the same Titian hair waving to Citrine across the cafeteria.

“Three. Half. The oldest two graduated from Chapin before we even started. I’m closer in age to their children.”

“Weird,” I say as I regloss my lips.

“Yeah. That’s why I kind of stayed out of the whole scene. The Kittridge name—that’s their thing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nah, its okay. I have a new name now.” She smiles and looks down at her rings again. “You think by the time the baby comes I’ll be used to all of this?”

“All of what?”

“Being married, living here, wearing jewelry . . .”

“If not . . .” I turn to her, snapping my clutch shut, noting how the well of confidence in
others’
ability to juggle motherhood is always overflowing. “Put the rings on a string around the baby, put the baby in a bjorn, keep painting.”

“Yeah.” Her face hesitantly brightens. “That’s the plan.”

“You’re killing me!”

“Okay, let’s go!”